‘Proposed budget makes tobacco more affordable’
The proposed budget for FY 2021-22, if passed, will make tobacco products even more affordable and increase its use among the youth and poor, said lawmakers, economists and public health experts at a virtual programme yesterday.
This would put public health under considerable threat and benefit only tobacco companies while making the government lose opportunities of earning additional revenues, they said.
The event was organised jointly by PROGGA (Knowledge for Progress) and Anti-Tobacco Media Alliance (ATMA).
In its analysis of tobacco tax related measures in the proposed budget, PROGGA drew the attention to the fact that the proposed budget has kept the prices and taxes on the low and medium tier cigarettes unchanged which respectively constitute around 72 and 16 percent of Bangladeshi cigarette market.
The prices for 10 sticks of high and premium tier cigarettes have been raised by only Tk 5 and Tk 7 (5.5 percent hike), setting the prices at Tk 102 and Tk 135 respectively.
The increase (5 percent) is very negligible compared to the increase in per capita income of the country (9 percent). Hence, the proposed budget would make all types of cigarettes even cheaper, they said.
It has also come up in the budget reaction that the existing faulty multi-tiered ad-valorem tax structure is also increasing the tendency to switch to cheaper cigarette brands. As a result, the government is losing the opportunity of earning a huge amount of revenue from pricey brands.
Speakers said implementation of budget proposals of anti-tobacco organisations, i.e. increasing prices of all tobacco products through imposing specific taxes will encourage 1.1 million people to quit smoking, prevent premature deaths of 390,000 current adults and 400,000 current youth, and earn Tk 3,400 crore in additional revenue from cigarettes as supplementary duty, health development surcharge and VAT.
It would also expedite the realisation of the vision of a tobacco-free Bangladesh by 2040, as declared by the prime minister, they said.
Saber Hossain Chowdhury MP, the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Environment, Forestry and Climate Change, said, "The low and medium tier of cigarettes need to be merged and brought under specific taxation in the final budget of this year. We are working to save lives and we are not ready to get defeated by tobacco companies."
He said tobacco claims 10 to 15 times more lives than Covid-19 pandemic has done in one year. "So why shouldn't we be worried about tobacco?"
Eminent economist and convener of the National Anti-Tobacco Platform, Dr Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, said, "We called for increasing prices for all tobacco products. We called for the introduction of specific taxes. The proposed budget does not reflect any of these demands."
However, he mentioned that the proposed budget can be changed if the prime minister is willing.
Among others, economist Dr Nazneen Ahmed, senior research fellow of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies; Dr Mahfuz Kabir, research director of Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies; Dr Syed Mahfuzul Huq, national professional officer of WHO; Md Mostafizur Rahman, lead policy advisor of Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Bangladesh; and Dr Sohel Reza Choudhury, professor at the Department of Epidemiology and Research of the National Heart Foundation, spoke at the programme.
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